Archive for May, 2010

We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard. ~Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, 1764

People love to quote the beginning of this quote, but it is like the right to bear arms there is a qualification to free speech if you’re an ass than you’re an ass at your own peril. No one is going to stand up and defend your rights to free speech just because you make a group of assholes. If one guy walks in to a gay bar and starts telling everyone that gays are a blight on society and AIDS is god’s way of fixing the world. He’s gona get his butt kicked and he’ll deserve it and no one will think that this is a freedom of speech disaster. So why if you make a group of likeminded assholes does it become freedom of speech

The neo Nazi says how freedom won out and this is a great day for freedom, no it didn’t and no it was not. It isn’t freedom when every punk gets to antagonize people. What were they marching for? They were not using the march to spread an idea, it was a publicity stunt meant to use the outrage of innocent people to get media coverage.

When Voltaire said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” he would defend your right to express yourself and spread new ideas in their proper setting. He would not defend this, using other peoples discomfort to aggrandize your own beliefs. This is not even akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater, its pure stupidity. It truly saddens me that the cutting edge of free speech is not to enlighten the public, but to malign it. Freedom of speech is no longer about the spread of ideas and a fortress against tyranny, rather it is the tyranny against the gullible public a tyranny where right and wrong have no meaning and the battles are not fought with ideas but with PR campaigns set to Spin their side as an abused minority speaking out against the cruel overlords who have the outrages crass to be upset about people who hate them using them.